THE BIG SIX.
It feels as though all the “old” ways are under assault at once. The arguments against what is and how it came to be, are endless. Overpopulation is an argument that’s so old it’s become new again. The reasons to limit – even reduce – population change with the winds of politics, but they’re certainly heating up again, now. Mankind has no clear basis for determining when population is “over,” or just larger, but there are plenty of worries… and theories – same things, sometimes.
TRUE SEX
Another, relatively new argument is about sexuality. The closer we can get to pure animalism the better, according to some. Animals, themselves, exercise better ethics about sex than do humans who want to act like animals. Even Federal and state governments are de-regulating sex, mostly by coercing straight people, who are the vast majority. Why it is a government problem is hard to compute.
Reconfiguring sex brings up issues like Freedom, Social Cohesion, Law, Justice and the Regulatory State. The social – and sexual – roles of males and females are shifting, and have been for a century, to the point they no longer have legal definition. Their denial is where legality matters. The original feminist rebellion, allegorized in the Garden of Eden story, is playing out to unintended results, all around us.
HOT TRUTH
Climate Change – measurable in less than half a lifetime – is a wonderfully heavy political tool for leftist, controlling types. Too many people on the planet is the source of it, of course, as we are the source for everything unpleasant, even, now, earthquakes and volcanoes. The chief agitators about climate change are the same who want to sunder sexuality, disrupt business, cut law free from its moorings and render education into government pigeon-holing.
COLD TRUTH
Religious institutions are being de-legitimized, despite Constitutional protection of religious freedom, but religion, itself – as in spirituality – is being lost at the same time, as if it were never more than decoration. The spirituality of life is dismissed as inconvenience, as millions of abortions are committed around the world, so strongly advocated by those who deny fatherhood and motherhood as oppressive.
Science, to socialist controllers, is the new religion. It’s technology, really, that provides cover for the erasing of tradition… and of spirit. Science somehow justifies top-down regulation; freedom, religious and otherwise, is its impediment.
FORMULA SIX
All areas of human testing, failure and success derive from the following elements of the formulae for Humanity:
1) Truth; 2) Belief; 3) Spirituality; 4) Life; 5) Death; and, 6) Freedom.
I have tried to identify another “root” or “end” to improve this sextet, but these encompass everything, I think. All other topics of debate, argument, war and peace, including those heated and cold, are “means” to these “ends.” My contention is that it is possible to devise governance that prevents the means from thwarting the ends for all… and for every individual, family, extended group or nation. So, in turn:
TRUTH is absolute, illimitable, pure. It bumps into beliefs – or the other way around – constantly, but it can’t be changed with a new truth (opinion) to take its place, and lies may stick to it only temporarily. Truth is the reason for experiment, discovery, curiosity and science, but it can’t be limited by any of those – it simply is.
TREWTH
Many of mankind’s troubles stem from attempts to define or re-define truth, as though different opinions represented differing sets of truths. Obviously that is impossible; there are only differing sets of beliefs or, corrosively, attitudes.
Truth may be described through evidence, but evidence, itself, requires constant, scientific (defined as examination and testing free of the pollution of beliefs) distillation. There are as many truths as there are atomic particles, all potentially discoverable, but true regardless. Humans are concerned with a tiny fraction of them.
PERSONAL TRUTH
Our greatest literature is about the revelation of truth, or about truths that conflict based on unequal beliefs about them. Often, unable to reveal absolute truth, literature will draw moral lessons from its obvious existence, even if imperfectly known, and present those as a form of proof of absolutes. Such are easily disregarded by skeptics, who insist that they are entitled to irrefutable proof of absolute truth if they are to respond to it in any way. Otherwise, their comfortable beliefs will suffice for this lifetime.
JUDGMENT
Legal battles are one forge for isolating absolute truth, hopefully stripped of all misunderstanding. Oddly, mere opposing “views” of what is true are the essence of “proof” that will convict or acquit a suspect. Recognizing that absolute proof of absolute truth is imperfectly achievable by humans, we invest judges and juries with the power to “rate” the quality of opposing views of truth, in order to convict or acquit. Neither outcome establishes “truth,” although one may come close. Whose opinion of what is true, is most plausible?
Even confessions must be proven, as individuals are known to admit to acts not performed for various reasons.
TRUTH IN POLITICS
Controlling types, politicians and others, find that controlling access to truth – thereby defining truth for the controlled – yields immense power. Science is their umbrella, and education, glorious, indoctrinating, “public” education, is their most effective tool.
The monopolistic ability to control the beliefs of most of the population, and therefore how that population grants power democratically, enables teachers – controlled through licensure and unionization – to define “truth” for their students. “Science,” then is more free to pursue the “truths” it wishes to discover and to ignore those it wishes to obscure – or, as happens, doesn’t believe in.
Truth controlled by politics is a dangerous, dangerous weapon.
TRUE LIES
The existence of truth spawns lies… some unintended. Lying, when on purpose, is purely human. There is no inherent requirement for lying that must be met to live well. Lying is easy in its simplest applications; many are harmless, even beneficial for the “ly-ee.”
“Do I look stupid?” The asker probably thinks he or she DOES look stupid in some situation, but usually receives an answer like, “Of course not!” Which might be a lie. “Do these clothes make me look fat?”
Of course not.
[Additional Truthiness to follow]